My tea is steeping.
Windchimes clatter whitely on the porch,
banks of bamboo bow
and shoulder into the wind
The inner ear, its coils
its mazes
I forget for a moment which way
the letter z faces, and write it backwards.
The tiny hairs of the innermost ear,
so innermost it is almost
the brain, so innermost we almost don’t believe in it,
send messages in Morse code:
dizzy dizzy vertigo
nystagmus dizzy ess oh ess oh ess
Husband crouched over the toilet for hours,
then, recovered, driving to work
on gray highways, for hours.
Degenerative and idiopathic means
he is losing his hearing.
That orienting light for the eyes
in the back of the head,
repository
for the alphabet of degrees between music
and silence.
Anna Laura Reeve is a poet living in East Tennessee.